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Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
Predrag Cicovacki, 2014
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ForHeidi:
KeepShining
Amandoesnotlearntounderstandanythingunlesshelovesit.
Goethe
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Contents
Chronological Table
ix
Part I Being
I.1
I.2
I.3
I.4
I.5
I.6
I.7
I.8
Philosophical Method
9
Being as Being
17
Part II Values
Modifications of Being
23
Nature of Values
Strata of Real II.1
Being
29
II.2 Being
Moral Values in General 35
Categories of Real
II.3 and Categories of Cognition
Four Fundamental Moral Values
Categories of Being
41
II.4
Four Forms of Love
Ontology of Cognition
47
II.5
Aesthetic Object and Aesthetic
Critique of Intellectualism
53 Act
II.6
Aesthetic Values
II.7
Truth in Art
II.8
Sublime
II.9
Critique of Moralism
Part III
65
75
83
89
95
101
105
111
117
Personality
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viii
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Contents
137
153
163
145
165
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Chronological Table1
1882
1897
1907
190708
1909
1911
1912
Publication of DiephilosophischenGrundfragenderBiologie
[The Fundamental Philosophical Questions of Biology].
Birth of daughter Dagmar.
191418
191925
x
1921
ChronologicalTable
Publication of GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis
[Basic Elements of a Metaphysics of Knowledge].
193145
Professor in Berlin.
1932
1933
Publication of DasProblemdesgeistigenSeins:
Untersuchungen zurGrundlegungderGeschichtsphilosophie
undder Geisteswissenschaften[The Problem of Spiritual
Being: Investigations on the Foundations of the Philosophy of
History
and the Human Sciences].
1935
Publication of ZurGrundlegungderOntologie[On
the Foundations of Ontology].
1938
Publication of MglichkeitundWircklichkeit[Possibility
and Actuality].
1940
Publication of DerAufbauderrealenWelt:Grundrissder
allgemeinenKategorienlehre[The Structure of the Real
World: Outline of a Theory of the General Categories].
1943
194550
Professor in Gttingen.
ChronologicalTable
1950
xi
Publication of PhilosophiederNatur:Abrissderspeziellen
Kategorienlehre[Philosophy of Nature: Sketch of a Theory
of the Special Categories].
Dies on October 9.
1951
1953
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A few years ago, a book was published with the title, Why Arendt
Matters.1 In the case of Hannah Arendt, such consideration is
hardly needed. Her analysis of the human condition, the origin of
totalitarianism, and the banality of evil belong to the highlights of
the twentieth-century philosophy, especially in its second half. While
she may not get all the recognition she deserves, especially among
philosophers, Arendts ideas are widely discussed and her books are
available even in small bookstores.
This is not the case with Nicolai Hartmann (18821950). In the
period between 1925 and 1950, he was considered one of the leading
German philosophers. His worksnumerous, systematic, displaying his
encyclopedic knowledge and covering a vast variety of subjects, from
ontology and epistemology to ethics and aesthetics quickly went into
second, third, and in some cases even fourth editions. His 800-pluspage Ethik was translated into English five years after its publication, but
that ended up being the only one of his major books rendered into this
language. In the second half of the twentieth- and at the beginning of the
twenty-first century, Hartmann has been a neglected philosopher. He has
been a forgotten giant.
I find this state of affairs puzzling. From the first years of my
philosophy studies on, Hartmann has been one of my inspirations, one of
my teachers. Every time I open his books, I learn something; his texts
compel me to think afresh about a variety of philosophical issues. For this
reason, with this introduction to his philosophy, I want to re-open the
case for Hartmann. This book will focus on the questions concerning the
nature and value of Hartmanns philosophy. More formally, the questions
are:
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what philosophy is, or what role it is supposed to play in our age. The
second obstacle is that Hartmann kept away from all the main currents of
philosophy of his time; this makes it difficult to engage him in a dialogue
that could help estimate the nature and value of his philosophy. I will
briefly clarify both issues.
In a recent book, Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that
Shape the 21st Century, A. C. Grayling, a well-respected Oxford
philosopher, introduces our discipline in the following way: Philosophy
is derived from a Greek word literally meaning love of wisdom, but it is
better and more accurately defined as enquiry or enquiry and
reflection, giving expressions to their widest scope to denote efforts to
understand the world and human experience in it.2 This introduction is
so vague, so open-ended, so uninspiring, that, despite Graylings effort to
make philosophy seem relevant, it only makes the reader wonder whether
philosophy has any role to play in our lives: Can its concepts shape the
twenty-first century? Do its ideas matter at all?
When insiders are so confused, we sometimes find deeper
understanding of a certain discipline among its amateurish admirers.
A famous historian, Will Durant, describes philosophy as an attempt to
coordinate the real in the light of the ideal. He adds that metaphysics
is the study of the ultimate reality of all things: of the real and final
nature of matter (ontology), of mind (philosophical psychology), and of
the interrelation of mind and matter in the process of perception and
knowledge (epistemology).3
The second part of Durants clarification is fairly standard. The first
part, however, is interesting, even for Hartmanns point of view:
philosophy is an attempt to coordinate the real in the light of the ideal.
This is of interest for several reasons. First, it puts no direct emphasis
either on knowledge or on morals, as is customary nowadays. Durants
characterization is also intriguing because it does not preclude an
understanding of philosophy as love of wisdom: the wisdom of how to
govern our lives in this troubled, disorienting age. Hartmann is always
engaged in dialectical wrestling with philosophical tradition, and this
original meaning of philosophy may be more important to him than it
is for the vast majority of contemporary philosophers. Finally, Durants
relating of the ideal and the real is significant for Hartmann because being
and values are two major themes of his entire philosophical opus. Values
are not derived from real being, but belong to
2
A. C. Grayling, Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that Shape the 21st Century
(New York: Perseus Books, 2009), 263.
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of Great Philosophers
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 3.
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Arendt was a student in Marburg just when Hartmann was finishing his career there,
but she was never Hartmanns student. Gadamer was, but he quickly switched to
Heidegger. After the initial mutual sympathy between Hartmann and Heidegger, the
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1. The
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Part I
Being
Beingitselfisdisharmonious,andconflictistheformofitsbeing.
Hartmann
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I .1
Philosophical Method
For Plato and Aristotle, philosophy begins with wonder (). Arendt
understands in terms of a shocked wonder at the miracle of
being, which could leave us speechless because the actual content of what
is observed is untranslatable into words. It is precisely this shocked
wonder that eventually leads Plato toward the beholding of Ideas. While
Aristotle speaks about the beginning of philosophy in virtually the same
terms as Plato, his emphasis is different than that of his teacher. For
Aristotle, the actual impulse to philosophize lies in the desire to escape
ignorance.1
The modern spirit of doubt stands in striking contrast to the ancient
spirit of wonder. All modern philosophy, maintains Arendt, consists in the
ramifications of Descartes radical doubt. Dudley Young points out
another important difference between the ancient and modern attitudes,
the one dealing with the will-to-power. To wonder at the world involves
not only attentiveness and awe, but also the intention to keep what is
wonder-ful safe from the forces of ignorance that would soil and obscure
it. According to Young, Philosophy originates not in the will-to-power
but in wonder, which is to say that the world we wish to understand calls
us in the first instance to arrest our movements, put down our tools, and be
properly astonished by its that-ness . . . before we set to work analyzing
its what-ness.2
Hartmann would approve of the remarks by both Arendt and Young.
He also subscribes to the ancient view that philosophy begins with wonder
and argues that there is no other natural entrance path to philosophy. The
ancient philosophers wondered at the beauty and complexity of the
, of the universe which they experienced as a living being.
Philosophy begins with wonder, and it consists in the thoughtful
exploration of the beauty and the complexity of the universe. For
Hartmann, philosophy is the analysis
ofwonder.
1
Hannah Arendt, TheHumanCondition, 302, note 67. See also Arendt, TheLifeofthe
Mind(San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1978), 14151.
Dudley Young, OriginsoftheSacred(New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 270.
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lead to aporias, which are like knots in wood. They are not made by us,
nor do they emerge because of our ignorance, lack of depth, or because
we approach problems from the wrong angle. The knots are in the wood
itself, in the grains of the world that we encounter. They emerge as the
tree of being grows. We encounter them regardless of our philosophical or
historical perspectiveregardless of whether we look at the tree of being
from the top or bottom, from the left or right.
These knots, those problems and aporias, create a philosophical
challenge. They present a challenge because it is difficult to cut a knot
through the middle, no matter how hard we try or how skillful we are.
Often we must acknowledge these knots and leave them as they are. Only
in that sense does philosophy become theoretical () not as a
definitive or comprehensive solution of certain problems, and even less as
a complete theoretical system. Philosophy is (only) a wayof looking and
considering, of grasping and contemplating the complexities of the world
as much and as carefully as that is possible.5
Although practiced by Socrates and Plato, Hartmann credits Aristotle
for developing aporetics. The virtue of Aristotles forgotten procedure
consists in approaching philosophical problems by analyzing the given
facts and trying to uncover the inner structure of the problems in question.
Grasping the inner structure of philosophical problems allows us to
ignore their accidental features and historical residues. It also enables us
to understand what is ceaselessly puzzling in these problems.
Metaphysical problems are nothing but eternal puzzles that the world
poses to us.
Aristotle relates aporias to , the explorations of various
routes or ways. This is why Hartmann translates the Greek word aporia
as Weglsigkeit: encountering obstacles on our way and getting lost en
route. These obstacles may result from our ignorance and confusion.
They also, and no less importantly, emerge from the path, from reality
itself: being itself is disharmonious, and conflict is the form of being.6
Taken in this sense, in GrundzgeeinerMetaphysikderErkenntnis, forth ed. (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1949), ch. 11, 125, Hartmann seems to suggest the following threestage approach: phenomena, problems (aporias), and theory. Roberto Poli maintains
that this is Hartmanns methodological approach; see his article on Hartmann in
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.standford.edu/entires/nicolaihartmann).
6
Nicolai Hartmann, Wie ist kritische Ontologie berhaupt mglich?, in Festschrift
frPaulNatorp(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1924), ed. E. Cassirer, 12477; reprinted
in Nicloai Hartmann, KleinereSchriften, Vol. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1958), 268313,
quoted from page 311. Translated by Keith Peterson as How is Critical Ontology
Possible? Axiomates22: 2012, 31554. See also Nicolai Hartmann, NeueWegeder
Ontologie, trans. Reinhard C. Kuhn as NewWaysofOntologyand first published in
English by Henry Regenery Company (Chicago, in 1953), and recently reissued by
Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ, 2012). I will give references by first
citing
5
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the chapter from which the quote is taken (which is the same for the original German
and the English translation), and then by giving a page number of the Transaction
edition; in this particular case, ch. VI, 6773.
7
Nicolai Hartmann, Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Introduction, 8.
In Ethik, ch. 75a [III, 138], Hartmann claims: No philosophy solves metaphysical
problems, it can only deal with them; and how far it can succeed in so doing must
always remain doubtful. As an illustration of this approach, see ch. 84 [III, 2515] of
Ethik.
8
Nicolai Hartmann, Diesseits von Idealismus and Realismus, KantStudien29:1924,
161.
9
Hartmann, GrundzgeeinerMetaphysik der Erkenntnis, Introduction, 8. For further
discussion, see Anton Schlittmaier, Nicolai Hartmanns Aporetics and Its Place in
the History of Philosophy, in The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, ed. R. Poli, C.
Scognamiglio, and F. Tremblay (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 3352.
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PhilosophicalMethod
13
Aristotle distances himself from Socrates, who claims that the only
knowledge that he has is that of his ignorance. Yet even Aristotle admits
that the resolutions of the aporias we face may take a variety of forms: not
only the positing of the most likely hypothesis, which he considers to be
the distinguishing feature of the method of analysis, but also of allowing
the existence of a reasonable contradiction, which is the subject matter of
dialectic.
To emphasize the same point, in his writings after BasicElementsofa
MetaphysicsofKnowledge, Hartmann speaks more often about antinomies
than about aporias. In this sense, he follows Kant, who argues that
speculative metaphysics leads to the contrasting, equally supportable
claims that cannot be resolved by rational means (alone). Kant initially
accepts the existence of four antinomies of pure reason, but in the
subsequent Critiques (Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of
Judgment), he discovers new
antinomies in other realms of philosophical thinking as well. According to
Hartmann, there are metaphysical aporias and antinomies in every aspect
of being, in every facet of human experience.
Can these aporias and antinomies ever be resolved? Is the task of
philosophy to lead us to the definitive solutions to such metaphysical
problems?
Hartmann does not think so. In this context, it may be important to
introduce a few of his thoughts on dialectic. Like a Socratic dialogue,
dialectic deals with differing, frequently opposing views. Socrates has
no problem with his dialogues ending in aporias, as long as they lead his
interlocutors to realize the unsoundness of their own previously held views
and their ignorance with regard to some important ethical issues. Plato and
Aristotle turn dialectic into a positive method, a method by means of
which we come to the most general ideas from most specific cases. Like
Socrates, Kant retorts to the negative aspect of dialectic, the dialectic as
the logic of illusion, a way of curbing the unfounded pretentions of
speculative reason. For Hegel, dialectic once again becomes a positive
method by which a thesis and its antithesis are resolved into a higher
synthesis.
Hartmann resists this textbook interpretation of Hegels dialectical
method. He does not hide his high, almost reverential opinion about this
method:
Under all circumstances one will not be able to conceal that there
is something opaque, unclarified and enigmatic in dialectic. There
were in all ages only very few who mastered it, isolated ones indeed.
In antiquity there were about three or four speculative thinkers; in
the modern period definitely not moreat least of those who have
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I.2
Being as Being
Aristotles most famous book, Metaphysics, was not named that way
by him. He left no title at all, and its editors placed it behind his works
on Physics. Thus the name Metaphysics: behind (or above, or beyond)
physics. It is generally accepted that this title, accidental as it is, is
accurate. Hartmann disagrees. He believes that the book should be named
Ontology since it deals with ontological problems. One exception is
book XII, which focuses on metaphysical issues in the narrow sense.
Hartmann holds that ontological problems are a subset of metaphysical
problems concerning the ultimate nature and structure of being (
, Sein). Unlike the majority of our metaphysical problems, he argues
that ontological problems are most solvable. Yet, we cannot solve them
if we follow the ways of traditional ontology:
The old theory of being is based upon the thesis that the universal,
crystallized in the essentia as substantial form and comprehensible
as concept, is the determining and formative core of things. . . . The
extreme representatives of this doctrine even assigned true reality to
the universal essences alone, thereby disparaging the world of time
and [individual] things.1
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Nicolai Hartmann, Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, forth ed. (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1965), xi. For Hartmanns masterful summary review of the history of
ontological thought, see Chapters 510 of this work. His review also includes a harsh
criticism of Heidegger.
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BeingasBeing
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I.3
Modifications of Being
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4
5
Otto Samuel translates Dasein and Sosein as Hereness and Suchness; Otto
Samuel, A Foundation of Ontology: A Critical Analysis of Nicolai Hartmann
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 478. It is also possible to translate these
terms as that- ness and what-ness. For Heidegger, Daseinrefers to a manner of
Being, being- in-the-world, which reveals an incorrigible finitude in the very
manner of being. By contrast, Hartmann thinks of being in terms of the
complementary categorial pair: finiteinfinite.
Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, ch. 19a, 1234.
Hartmann, ZurGrundlegungderOntologie, ch. 18a, 118.
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last member, the universe as a whole, about which we can only say that it
is (Dasein) but not how it is (Sosein).6
Here we see the difference of Hartmanns treatment in comparison
to the traditional philosophers. Without a proper appreciation of the
DaseinSosein distinction, the traditional philosophers perpetually
tried to determine the Sosein of the world as a whole by analogy to an
individual thing (res). They also attempted to elevate the Dasein of the
last link into some kind of higher (absolute, unconditional, etc.) being.
No such hierarchies of being are justified. What we must take away from
this distinction of Dasein and Sosein is that more than mere existence
belongs to the real, and that there is existence even outside of the real. This
directs us toward Hartmanns discussion of the real and ideal being, which
has turned out to be the most controversial of the three modifications of
being he discusses. Since it is also most important for all other parts of his
philosophical project, we will give it due attention.
It is obvious that there are real beings. They are phenomenologically
given to us as individual, unique, and temporally located. Many real beings
are also located in space (for instance inanimate objects), but not all of
them are. But, why believe that there is any other kind of being? Why
believe that there is any sphere of ideal being or, as Hartmann sometimes
also calls it, the ideal world? This is the central aporia of ideal being.
In long, and often futile, discussions over the nature of universals, ideal
being has been relegated either into things, concepts, or, in some cases, the
transcendent mind of God. Hartmann admits that there is no natural
consciousness of ideal being. Its existence is hidden, as it were, in the
background of real being. While real being imposes itself on us, ideal
being never does. This is why ideal being is so often denied, neglected, or
simply overlooked.
The first and most convincing indication that ideal being exists was
found in mathematics. From Platos belief in the significance of geometry
to Galileos dictum that the Book of Nature is written in mathematical
language, there has long been a conviction that mathematical principles
are not just concepts and ideas. They exist not as thoughts but as entities.
Besides mathematical principles, there are also logical principles.
Hartmann calls mathematical and logical principles formal essences,
in order to distinguish them from values, which (following Max Scheler)
he considers as material essences.
Ideal being manifests itself through multiple connections with real
being. To a significant degree, the world of real things obeys mathematical
6
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ModificationsofBeing
27
and logical principles; ideal values find their realization in this world. We
can hardly understand what human beings are, or what it means to have a
personality, without taking into account the various aspects of ideal being.
Hartmann holds that we can discover the structural properties of ideal
being even without their actualization in real being. Ideal being is open for
insight by a priori cognition. We can recognize ideal being a priori because
it is universal, nontemporal, and unchanging. From this point of view, it
appears that ideal being has a mode of existence independent of real being;
just as real being is indifferent to being cognized, ideal being is indifferent
to being actualized. This realization seduces Plato to consider ideal being
as
a higher form of being and ontologically superior to real being.
Plato goes too far. He overlooks the double aspect of the relationship of
real and ideal beings. Ontologically speaking, real beings have superiority
over ideal beings. Although indifferent toward their actualization and
epistemologically superior, without a proper actualization, ideal beings
float without real function. Thus, ideal beings are imperfect and
incomplete, unless tied to real beings. The key point is that these two
spheres of being, these two worlds, are not just disparate but also united;
they are two ways of being of the same world. In Hartmanns words,
Ideal being can be found in the basic structure of everything real.
Ontologically speaking, the whole sphere of the ideal is indifferent to
the sphere of the real. But the two spheres do not exist independently,
nor do we encounter them in mutual isolation. They are simple different
ways of being. What distinguishes them radically is the fact that
everything real is individual, unique, destructible; whereas everything
ideal is universal, returnable, always existing.7
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From this initial discussion we can already sense that the central task of
Hartmanns ontological project is to lead us toward the rediscovery of
the real. He wants us to focus on the concrete and temporal entities. This
may be the first of a series of surprises that are awaiting us in the study
of Hartmanns philosophy. While ontology may have a reputation of an
abstract and disconnected discipline from the real world, its task is actually
to lead us away for the proverbial ivory tower of philosophy and toward
the richness and concreteness of the changing individual entities that
populate the real world.
8
9
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I.4
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3
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the ontological novelty of every higher level with regard to every lower
level.
Hartmanns account of how this happens is structurally similar to his
explanation of the dialectic of the Dasein and Sosein. He illustrates it
with the example of matter and form, perhaps the most misunderstood
of all ontological distinctions. Matter and form are not to be understood
in any absolute and static sense, neither in terms of an ultimate, insoluble
material principle, nor in terms of an isolated and elevated form. Form
and matter are relative in the sense that all form can be matter for a
higher form, and all matter can be form for a lower matter. The atom is
the matter of the molecules but is itself a formed structure. The molecule
is the matter of the cell, which in turn is the matter of multicelled
organism, and so on.
Besides this principle of dependency, the real world is also constructed
on the related but different principle of determination. We understand this
principle even less than the principle of dependency. For example, much
of our thinking about the principle of determination is in terms of causes
and effects. Yet they constitute only one form of determination. The basic
principle of determination is rather the modal principle of sufficient reason.
This principle affirms that nothing occurs in the world that does not have
its (sufficient) ground in something else. The principle of sufficient reason
is equally important for all strata of the real world. In the realm of thought,
just like in the inorganic realm, nothing exists by chance in the ontological
sense. Everything depends on some conditions and occurs only where
these are fulfilled. If all conditions are fulfilled, they form a sufficient
reason, and the event is bound to occur.
Human beings serve as the simplest and most convincing proof that
reality is both layered and dynamically united. Man is a participant not
only of the spatially extended inorganic and organic strata of reality, but
also of its nonspatial psychic and spiritual layers. He is endowed with
consciousness, as well as spirit. Modifying some insights of Hegel and
Dilthey, Hartmann distinguishes a personal spirit from an objective spirit,
which presents itself as a suprapersonal being manifested in institutions,
legal order, culture, religion, science, speech, and so on. He calls these
manifestations of the living and historically bounded supra-personal
spirit: objectified spirit. Hartmann avoids the prejudices of both
supra-individual substantialism and of extreme individualism by arguing
in favor of the reciprocity of the objective and the personal spirit.
Paraphrasing Kant, he maintains that without a personal spirit, an
objective spirit would be empty and devoid of content; while without
an objective spirit, a personal spirit would be irresponsible and blind.
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Hartmann, Neue Wege der Ontologie, ch. XI, 120. See Hartmanns books, Das
Problem des geistigen Seins (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950), ch. 6, 7988, and
Philosophieder Natur(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950), 522ff.
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I.5
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See, for instance, Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp
Smith (New York: Palgrave, 2003), A657/BB902, A7980/B1056.
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CategoriesofRealBeing
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CategoriesofRealBeing
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I.6
Man knows things by means of his categories, but he does not need
a knowledge of these categories for the purpose. This is Hartmanns
fundamental view. He further explains: Knowledge of categories does
not come until epistemology develops, but knowledge of things does
not have to wait for epistemology.1
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knowledge, reveals that there are not only temporal but insurmountable
boundaries of human cognition. Critique is the highest point not only
of our knowledge of knowledge, but also of our knowledge of ignorance.
Among those things that we cannot know are the answers to the eternal
metaphysical questions we long to know the most: the existence of
God, the immortality of the soul and the possibility of freedom. Kant
simultaneously develops Western intellectualism to its highest peak and
leads it to the brink of collapse.
Kants intention is not to destroy metaphysics. His aim is to replace
the old, speculative and untenable way of doing metaphysics with a new
way that would make it scientifically respectable. In this process, he
accomplishes a number of remarkable achievements but also commits a
series of far-reaching mistakes. Among Kants greatest accomplishments
are the discovery of the antinomies of pure reason and the deduction of
categories. Both accomplishments are based on Kants rephrasing of the
old and neglected question in a bold and imaginative way: How are
synthetic a priori judgments possible?
A priori is a way of knowledge independent of experience.
Mathematics has always been best evidence of this. In magical ways, we
can anticipate that the real world must conform to certain pure insights,
especially with regard to some quantifiable relations. Yet there are many a
priori judgments that are not mathematical, judgments that have nothing
to do with quantities. Metaphysical assertions belong to such synthetic
a priori judgments. The antinomies reveal not only that we can form
contradictory metaphysical assertions (e.g., God exists and God does
not exist), but also that we can produce evidenceproofsthat seems
equally supportive of them.
In an attempt to understand how we make any synthetic judgments at
all, and then what would make such judgments objectively valid (rather
than antinomical), Kant rediscovers the categories. While it seems that
objects are ontologically prior to our cognitions and that our
knowledge must conform to these objects, it is really the objects that
turn around us, the cognitive subjects. In order to be known, these objects
must conform to our forms of intuition (space and time) and our
categories. Kant formulates this insight as the highest principle of all
synthetic judgments: the conditions of the possibility of experience in
general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of
experience.3
Hartmann is convinced that Kant is right about arguing that only
the identity of the categories of being and the categories of cognition can
3
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Hartmann, Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, ch. 17b, 151. For further
discussion, see L. W. Beck, Nicolai Hartmanns Criticism of Kants Theory of
Knowledge, PhilosophyandPhenomenologicalResearch, 2:1942, 472500.
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I .7
Ontology of Cognition
1
2
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Nicolas Berdyaev praises Hartmann for insisting on this view; see his TheBeginning
andtheEnd, trans. R. M. French (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 42.
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OntologyofCognition
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these two coincide can thought hit off being. The secret is in the
recurrence of [ontological] categories of lower strata in the structure of
the intelligent spirit.5
The categories of the lower strata recur in the content of knowledge of
the higher strata. This recurrence accounts for the possibility of
coordination between the subject and the object, so that the former
can adequately represent the latter, despite their difference and
independence. Hartmann calls it a reduplication of the categories in
the cognitive relationship: The same categories confront each other in
the object and the subject: in the object as categories of the real, in the
subject as categories of content only.6
The details of such a reduplication of the categories are not only
baffling but also, for the most part, inaccessible to us. As Kant already
realized, it may be easier to explain such reduplication in the realm of
quantitative categories. How it happens with all other (nonquantitative)
categories is yet to be comprehended. Although Kant errs in his turn
toward logicism in his explanation of the possibility of cognition,
Hartmann believes that his account of the possibility of all synthetic
judgments is still valuable:
If we now remember that the a priori element of knowledge depends
on the identity of cognitive and ontological categories and that the
limits of this identity are also the limits of apriorism, the modification
of this recurrence becomes a matter of considerable importance. For
epistemologically it becomes a real task to define with precision for
every particular case the deviation from the ontological category.
Obviously this cannot be done summarily for all categories but only
by detailed analysis, the factor of deviation from the corresponding
category of the real being a different one in every cognitive category.7
5
6
7
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I.8
Critique of Intellectualism
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CritiqueofIntellectualism
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objective knowledge. Hartmanns view does not leave any room for doubt
that there are cracks both in the cosmic egg and the rational mind
exploring it. We habitually refuse to confront those cracks and limitations.
Our expectations blind us for the resistance of reality that our ideas and
theoretical constructs encounter, and we conveniently patch them over. We
have learned that, even in the face of recalcitrant reality, we can produce
some ad hoc (and ad hominen) arguments that save the phenomena
and our theoretical constructs by preserving their internal coherence. In
inventing more and more sophisticated theoretical constructs, which have
to pass the criterion of internal coherence, we remove ourselves further
away from what is given and what reality is like. For a philosopher of
Hartmanns integrity, however, that is simply unacceptable. Our quest is
not for certainty but for reality as it is, in all of its mind-boggling and
wondrous inconsistencies and tensions.
Philosophers like Gadamer praise Hartmanns refusal to follow
abstract theoretical constructs, but criticize him from a different
perspective. Gadamer does not complain about Hartmanns shrinking
of the radius of rationality; he thinks that its limits are far narrower than
Hartmann asserts. More importantly, he charges that Hartmann misses
some essential features of the nature of human rationality. Hartmann
wants to eliminate the inaccuracies of the past once and forever and
approaches philosophical problems from a neutral point of view, from
this side of idealism and realism. He imagines that we can practice
philosophy, or any kind of thinking, with a minimum of metaphysics,
and that there are eternal philosophical problems. Gadamer argues that
his one-time teacher is not just old-fashioned, but misguided. True,
human rationality is embodied in emotions, intuitions, and human
expectations. Hartmann fails to recognize, however, that it is also
embodied in socialpractices, with all of their accompanying prejudices.
This is not a reason for concern, proclaims Gadamer, for prejudices
are conditions of understanding. It is high time to liberate ourselves
not from the prejudices of the past, but from our prejudice against
prejudice.6
Hartmann rejects the Aristotelian metaphysics of realms (ontology,
cosmology,
theology,
psychology),
aswellastheolddeductiveandspeculative metaphysics. He attempts to
develop new ways of ontology based on the
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd edn, trans. J. Weinsheimer and
D. G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1993), 277. Scheler voices a similar
criticism of Hartmann in the Preface for the third edition of his Formalism in
Ethics, xxxxxxi.
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of the perennial problem which has nothing to do with the logic of question
and answer. The case is analogous for the problem of the relationship of
ontological and epistemological categories and, perhaps the greatest
problem of all, the relationship of the mind and real world. Just as there are
questions dealing with the nature of humanity, which remain essentially
the same regardless of the social context in which they are raised, there are
also ontological questions regarding the nature and structure of being.
These ontological questions about the world such as it actually is are
more basic than both the logic of natural sciences and the hermeneutical
logic advocated by the historically oriented and postmodernist
philosophers. Just as science cannot tell us what the fundamental
categories of being are, but, instead, must take them over from
ontology, neither can human sciences determine their own categories
without the help of a timelessly considered ontology. We must therefore
return to ontology because (i) all fundamental metaphysical questions
are ontological in nature, and because (ii) the content of these questions
is not an accidental or arbitrary product of social practice; such
questions are rooted in the eternal puzzlement at the world and its
wonders.8
Gadamers logic of questions and answers has a role to play not where
he sees it, but at a different point of philosophical inquiry. One of the
vices of the intellectualism is that it constantly strives toward rational
closure of any inquiry, a definitive answer to any question. Hartmanns
ontology of the conflicting being and the dialectic of antinomies show how
groundless such expectations are. Even in the field in which we hope for
some definitive results, the field of categorial analysis, our thinking leads
us from one set of problems to further and more complex problems. Our
most systematic and rigorous thinking leads us toward the discovery of
new conflicts, antinomies, and wonders. Wonder is thus not only the
initiator of philosophical thinking and analysis, but also its end product.
Philosophy beings with our wonder at the complexity and beauty of the
world and deepens that wonder and the sense of its appreciation even
further. Despite our intellectualistic dream of the conclusive overcoming
of the opposites in their grand synthesis, the cycle never ends.
In Hartmanns view, the vast majority of post-Hegelian philosophers
(Gadamer included) turn against ontology because of the correlativistic
mistake.9 They place the mind, whether understood in the individual or
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the social way, as it were between the cognizing subject and the world to
be cognized. They then assume that, in order to have cognition, the mind
must correlate between them. The mind becomes the ultimate judge of
what there is, and of what kind of properties and limits that being may
have.
Hartmanns view is that, just because our thinking about something
is a product of consciousness, the object we think about does not thereby
become mind-dependent. The (cor)relation between a subject and an object
does not turn the object into something mental. In analogy to Berkeleys
esse est percipi, we can say that the correlativistic argument postulates
that to be is to be thought about.
We should not confuse the way of thinking and the conditions of
experience on the one hand, with what we are thinking about and the
objects of experience on the other. In this type of fallacy, the fascination
with the intentio obliqua becomes the prison of the inquiring mind. For
Hartmann, the price of being entrapped in our minds is too high: if only
internal (or narrative) coherence matters, we then sacrifice any robust
notion of truth and knowledge. If, by contrast, we turn back to intentio
recta, as ontology must do, this entrapping illusion disappears: being is
what it is, regardless of what anyone thinks and how much one knows
about it.
The way toward rediscovery of the real is hence open. And if in this
process we stumble upon irresolvable antinomies and find out that being
is not as harmonious as we thought, so be it. If reality is more recalcitrant
to our logical constraints than we anticipated, let us loosen-up our logical
principles and find logic that corresponds to the resistance of the real.
Why continue to imitate the proverbial fishermen who are more
preoccupied with their nets than the fish they are supposed to catch in
them? If philosophy is to remain faithful to its original calling, why not
repudiate the correlativistic way of thinking, assisted by untenable
intellectualistic expectations, and return to reality to find out what it
really is?
In ordering ourselves toward the world as it is, we should also not
forget that, in this first part of the book, we have mostly discussed only
one way of being: real being. We have left untouched the whole realm
of values, which belongs to ideal being. Of the various kinds of values,
Hartmann focuses on two: moral and aesthetic. His books discussing
these values are not an afterthought for Hartmann, or a desire to
complete a philosophical system. From the initial outlines of his
ontological program, Hartmann emphasizes the role of moral and
aesthetic values. His book on moral values, Ethics, appeared in 1926,
before any major work on ontology in a narrow sense. Similarly, his
first paper on aesthetics, presented at the
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10
11
Nicolai Hartmann, ber die Stellung der sthetischen Werte im Reich der Werte
berhaupt, Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy Harvard
University,Cambridge,Massachusetts,1926(New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1927), 42836.
Hartmann, Wie ist kritische Ontologie mglich? 312.
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Part II
Values
Morallifeislifeinthemidstof
conflicts.
Hartmann
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II.1
Nature of Values
Hartmann, Ethik, Introduction, sec. 5 [I, 38]. See also Ethik, ch. 41c [II, 210].
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actual life is saturated and overflows with values, and when we lay
hold of it we find it replete with wonder and grandeur.2
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From ancient times, the focus has been on finding the highest or ultimate
value of human life standing on the top of the pyramid of other values. A
rough division of the major attempts at grasping such an ultimate value
separates them into hedonistic and anti-hedonistic views. The hedonistic
views differ with regard to whether the ultimate value is pleasure-based, or
something more comprehensive and expressed in terms of contentment.
The anti-hedonistic views range from those regarding knowledge, truth,
beauty, virtue, harmony, love, friendship, justice, or freedom as the
highest good. Nor is there any agreement as to whether there is a strict
pyramid of values, all-arching toward one highest value, or, instead, a
genuine pluralism, something like a network of independent and
irreducible values.
There are also related confusions regarding the function, ontological
status, absoluteness, and objectivity of values. One of the thinkers who
have made great impact on our understanding of these issues in the
twentieth century, Isaiah Berlin, maintains that, values are created by
men in their struggle to master themselves, their society and natural
world. Values, therefore, [are] historical, relative to the cultures that
engendered them and contradictory, since human nature itself is
contradictory.5
Hartmann contests Berlins views on virtually every point. It is
misleading to say that values deal with mastering ourselves, our society,
and the natural world. While this is accepted as one of the usually
undisputed pillars of the Western worldview, the primary function of
values does not concern any form of mastering. Values deal with guidance
and orientation. Like the stars above, they help us find our way through
reality by directing us toward the worthy objects of devotion and
pursuit. Hartmann holds that the proper function of values is
Sinngebungthey give sense and meaning, they recommend what is to
be esteemed and what not. Values are not related to mastery over
ourselves, or of our social and natural world. They are related to our
aspirations. As spiritual beings, we strive toward what is great and
superior. We strive toward them from the bottom of our nature, and this
Hartmann considers to be the most beautiful feature of humanity.
One point of agreement between Hartmann and Berlin is their view
that values cannot be derived from facts about human nature. Berlin does
a masterful job in showing how the philosophers of the Enlightenment
assume that all human beings want the same things and that those things
are not in conflict. On the basis of such rationalistic optimism, they believe
that if people are freed from ignorance and prejudices, as well as old
customs
5
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Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1976), 148.
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See Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 27, 32942; and Ethik, chs 356 [II, 12554].
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still outline their borders. Vital values involve values such as health,
energy level and life enthusiasm. Values of the pleasant and goods as
values are regularly mistakenly grouped together, for example when the
value of what is pleasant is attributed to an object that leads us to
experience pleasure.
Hartmann is not always clear about what he considers under the rubric
of goods as values. They all have in common that they are good for
someone (even if that someone is not aware of it), but then they branch
in diverse directions. In Aesthetics, for example, he speaks about the most
elementary goods, such as air, soil, light, and water. In Ethics, by contrast,
his focus is on two other groups of goods as values. One of them is
attached to the objective state of affairs, thus situational values, and
they include existence, situation, power, happiness, and more specific
goods, such as property, possession, law, education, and literature. The
other kind of goods
as values are attached to a subject, and Hartmann there distinguishes life,
consciousness, activity, suffering, strength, freedom of the will, foresight,
and purposive efficacy.
Like Scheler, Hartmann considers cognitive, moral, and aesthetic
values as spiritualvalues. One way to distinguish among spiritual values
is by looking at the carrier of value. In the case of moral values, it is
always a human being as a person. For cognitive values, the carrier is
not man, neither as a person, nor as a cognizer. Man is neither true nor
false, but his judgment is. Thus, the proper carrier of cognitive values is a
cognitive judgment. In the case of aesthetic values, the carrier again is
not man; it does not matter whether he is beautiful or ugly. The carrier of
an aesthetic value is an individual aesthetic object.
Unlike Scheler, Hartmann does not consider the values of the holy (or
religious values), because they depend on the existence of God, which can
neither be rationally established nor is it phenomenologically given.
The mutual relation of these kinds of values is that of conditioning, not
of founding (as in ontology of real being). In the conditioning relation,
unlike the stratification proper, when the conditioned value is actualized,
the conditioning value is not necessarily actualized with it. With regard to
our love for another person, for instance, the question is not whether the
service rendered to another person with such love is successful or not, that
is, whether the intended situation becomes actual or not. The relevant issue
is only whether it is sincerely undertaken. The conditioned value is always
higher than the value conditioning it.
The second law deals with the height and strength of values.
Philosophers have always searched for one definitive scale of values,
something analogous to the great chain of being in ontology. On
Schelers view, which attempts to account both for an ideal of one unified
scale and
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the apparent disagreements concerning what that scale is, the hierarchy
of values is itself absolutely invariable, while the order of preference in
history is itself variable.8
One of Hartmanns greatest contributions to our understanding of
values is to show that there cannot be such a scale. There are many scales
of values of which the two are the most important: the strength and the
height of values. They work in an inverse ratio: the lowest values are the
strongest, and the highest values are the weakest. In Hartmanns view,
the stronger a value, the more blameworthy is its absence but the less
praiseworthy is its presence. By contrast, the higher a value, the more
commendable is its attainment and the less culpable is its absence: A
threat to life and limb is the gravest threat; but mere life is not on that
account the highest good.9 More generally, Evidence of strength is
found in the seriousness of the offence against a value, while height is
known by the meritoriousness of fulfillment.10
The third law concerns the opposition and complementary relationships
of various values. In Ethics, Hartmann analyzes over 40 different values.
For every positive value, there is an opposing negative value (as well as the
neutral point, or the point of indifference). The basic situation in any value
conflict is not that between one positive value and its counterpart negative
value, but that between one positive value and another positive value (or
one negative value against another negative value). Such conflicts abound;
we constantly and unavoidably find ourselves in the middle of them. What
is more, no guiltless resolution of such conflicts is possible: one of the
conflicting values must be violated.
The incompatibilities of values arise because some opposing values
cannot be fully realized in the same life situations. One example of such an
opposition is between brotherly love (as championed by Tolstoy, for
example) and love of the remote (as advocated by Nietzsche). One value
urges the development of brotherhood and Christian compassion toward
those near us, while the other directs us to devote an even greater
attention to those who are remote, not just in space but even in time (as
our responsibility toward the future generations).
Another, even more serious type of conflict emerges because values
themselves are antithetical; for instance, brotherly love and justice. The
sharpest of such conflicts present the antinomies of values. As is the
9
10
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12
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I I. 2
Why does Hartmann entitle his book Ethics rather than A Theory of
Value?
Hartmann is aware of Kants three fundamental questions of
philosophy: (i) What can we know? (ii) What ought we to do? and
(iii) What may we hope? He recognizes that the second question
suggests that ethics aims at more than a merely cognitive grasp of reality,
and yet at less than what hope yearns for. This fundamental question
shows why ethics is primarily a practical rather than a theoretical
enterprise and also locates ethics between the hard realities of life and
the hovering ideals of the visionary.1
Taken by itself, the question What ought we to do? does not show
the full range of the ethical realm. It only focuses this realm into one
culminating and most visible point, that of practical interest. Underlying
the question dealing with the necessity and actuality of action, however, is
one broader and deeper requirement: in order to be moral beings, we need
to participate in the fullness of life, to be open and receptive to everything
that has meaning and value. Ethics cannot tell us what to do in every
practical situation, nor can it reduce us to mere mechanical executioners
of the moral law. Put differently, taken by itself, ethics cannot answer the
question that it sets as its primary concern. The ethics of conduct must
be part of a broader set of issues dealing with the nature of humanity and
the continuous development of every personality. The question What
ought we to do? always presupposes the concerns about who we are and
what we are trying to become. Our understanding of what is valuable in
life precedes and conditions the question of what specific action to
undertake. Put more broadly, just as ontology precedes and conditions
axiology, axiology precedes and conditions ethics.
Hartmann develops this insight not just in terms of the gap between to
be and ought to be, but also in terms of the distinction between ought
1
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persons as free agents, the values that characterize things and situations are
also involved. In order to be truthful, for example, a person must be alive.
That, however, does make life a moral value, while truthfulness clearly is
one. Life is agood but not thegood. The value of life is not moral but it is
morally relevant.
Hartmann further distinguishes between moral values and another
subset of goods as values, which he calls situational values and which
deal with the goals of our actions. Like all other goods as values,
situational values are morally relevant but not moral values themselves.
Our actions always aim at something, at the realization of certain values
in the situations in which we find ourselves. This does not make our aims,
goals, or ends the carriers of morality, as is so frequently assumed.
Valuable things can come into existence without any intention being
directed toward them, yet it is precisely this intention that makes a
certain value moral. Moral values are the values of intention, not intended
values. As Hartmann formulates it,
Moral qualities characterize a persons conduct, but not the object of
the intention in which his conduct subsists. According to Schelers
phrase, [moral values] appear on the back of the deed, but not in
the goal it aims at. The ethics of ends involves a fundamental
misunderstanding of moral values, in its false identification of these
with the value of the situation striven for.6
Hartmann, Ethik,ch. 27a [II, 31]. For Hartmanns criticism of teleological ethics, see
his TeleologischesDenken(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950).
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to be derived from any is. They are ontologically distinct. The project of
morality is to find a way to apply the ought existing in the realm of ideal
being to a concrete life situation. That is, the project is to actualize moral
values. The real issue in ethics is not how to derive an ought from an
is but which of the values to apply to the specific situation. What diverts
our will from the ought is the ought itself, for values are so many.
In clearing the ground toward our proper understanding of moral
values, Hartmann does not spare the widespread belief that happiness is
the highest moral value and the ultimate end of life. He considers
happiness not to be a moral value at all, much less the highest moral
value. Happiness is one of the values of the good. Together with
pleasure, with which it is frequently mistakenly identified, happiness is
a cloak for other, higher values, moral values included.
Following Aristotle, Hartmann distinguishes between the objective
and the subjective preconditions of happiness. Objectively, happiness
depends on favorable external circumstances, on lucky coincidences, or
good destiny. Taken in this sense, happiness is what is wanted, a situational
value. Considered in the subjective sense, happiness is closer to moral
values because it deals with a persons capacity for the appreciation of life.
It then relates to the persons ability to feel pleasure, satisfaction, joy, or
blessedness. These two sides of happiness can be fully independent of each
other and one can exist without the other.
Hartmanns discussion of happiness becomes more original when he
warns us of the dangers associated with happiness. One of them is that
we attempt to pursue happiness as a direct goal, while happiness, in fact,
cannot be attained in such a manner. Happiness only comes from where
one does not expect it; it occurs when we are not looking for it.
Hartmanns observation of the second danger associated with happiness
is even more interesting. People spoiled by happiness become shallow
and narrow-minded for other higher values. He writes, A man can bear
only a limited measure of happiness without sinking morally; even in
happiness there lurks a hidden disvalue. Indeed, in no other value is
this limiting phenomenon so paradoxical as in happiness.7
It is fascinating that Hartmann contrasts the value of happiness with
the value of suffering. All hedonistic forms of ethics identify suffering
with pain and consider it as an exemplar of evil. The ancient Greeks
attached no special value to suffering. Only Christianity takes a different
attitude toward it, and distinctly recognizes the elevating and liberating
effects of suffering. Instead of associating it with evil and considering it a
7
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those values that are indispensible for the actualization of moral values
but which themselves are not moral. Let us then follow Hartmanns own
summary of the nature of moral values, based primarily on Chapter 27 of
his Aesthetics.
2. The carriers of moral values are not material goods but exclusively
3.
4. Moral values are tied to living beings not only as the carriers of such
5.
values but also as their objects. Moral values and moral behavior deal
directly or indirectly not only with other spiritual beings, but also with
all living beings.
In every moral action, two kinds of values are always present: the
value of intention (or moral values) and the intended value (goods as
values, situational values).
7.
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Hartmann, Ethik, Introduction, sec. 8 [I, 46]. For further discussion, see Eugene
Kellys valuable book, MaterialEthicsofValue:MaxSchelerandNicolaiHartmann
(Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), chs. 12.
12
Hartmann, Ethik, Introduction, sec. 8 [I, 46].
11
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See Max Scheler, Person and SelfValue, trans. M. S. Frings (Dordrecht: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 12798.
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Both good and evil depend on the intended direction of our volition.
The good is an orientation toward highest values; it is the ability to discern
the higher value in a conflict of two positive values and then realize it in
the real world.
Hartmann does not believe in the good for the sake of good. That is
why the good is never the highest value, and also why it is never the
intended value (despite our common language that suggests otherwise).
The value of good is the value of intention. This point can be clarified by
contrasting good with evil. Hartmann defends a version of the Socratic
view that we never choose evil, that we are not satanic beings. It is
impossible for us to choose what we do not consider, in some sense,
valuable. Because of the nature of human volition, our choice is never
directed toward anything contrary to value as such. No one does evil for
evils sake. Our cravings are always toward the positive, toward the
valuable. A thief desires to possess some material goods. For him they
are valuable, otherwise he would not steal. This, of course, does not make
his action good, for in pursuit of some good as value he violates a still
higher value, the moral value. There are, however, more complicated
cases of evil:
In the case of elementary badness, like brutality, unscrupulous greed
and dishonesty, where it is evident that even in the absence of feeling
toward the disvalue (hence also toward the value) there is a moral
inferiority. In the life of the soul there exists factors which obscure
value, and the person himself is by no means guiltless in regard to
such factors.2
Hartmann does not want to explain away such complex cases of evil:
either by means of the Socratic belief that virtue is knowledge and vice
is ignorance, or the Christian view of the weakness of the will, or the
Augustinian conception of evil as the privation of good, or Arendts
insight into the banality of evil. There is almost always more than one
factor involved, but, in the end, we need to agree with Aristotle that
ultimately each person is to blame for not discriminating properly
between competing values.
As Hartmann considers it, the good does not fit into Schelers moral
topology. Hartmanns view of the noble is closer to this topology,
especially to Schelers conception of a hero, which in Western civilization
is regularly symbolized in the form of a noble warrior. Nobility is a
knightly virtue. It
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consists in the pursuit of one value at the exclusion of all others. The noble
is an inner disposition directed toward the highest, toward the exceptional
ideal, in the search for which a person becomes detached from everything
trivial or secondary.
Nobility of the character is the pursuit of a value that is not common to
all. It is an aristocracy of disposition: the magnanimity, generosity, largeheartedness, high-mindedness. Nobility presupposes goodness, but it
aims at what it perceives as best, and not simply as good. A noble
character displays revolutionary tendencies; he is never willing to
compromise the chosen value; he is never satisfied with half-measures.
Such a character experiences the joy of devotion toward what is above
him and looks away from, often even openly despises what is below
him. He looks at all that is narrow and pitiful as his enemy. The
noble is the forward-looking attitude.
The last two of Hartmanns four fundamental values, purity and
richness of experience, are utterly fascinating. They only partially
correspond to Schelers valuesoftheholy andthepleasurable. Purity means
beingunstained by evil: he is pure whom no desire leads astray, whom no
temptation allures. Not surprisingly, as the exemplars of purity Hartmann
lists Jesus, and also two of Dostoevskys characters who are both the
fools for Christ: Prince Myshkin from TheIdiotand Alyosha from The
BrothersKaramazov. In all three cases there is a lack of moral experience:
innocence is considered the highest good, sin the greatest evil. Besides
sin, the opposites of purity are pollution and defilement.
Purity of heart is the primal Christian virtue. In the religious context
purity is considered the whole meaning of moral virtue, but this view is
one-sided and too extreme. Without a doubt, there is much that is good
about purity: it is always connected with sincerity, frankness, openness,
and truthfulness. A pure person never wears a mask, never tells a lie. He
does not judge anyone, nor does he condemn any sin. He believes in
goodness in every man, he is optimistic in a childlike way. Perfect purity
borders on saintliness.
Purity cannot be identified with goodness, either quantitatively or
qualitatively. While the meaning of goodness is entirely positive, that of
purity, as the meaning of its word implies, is negative. Not only is the pure
person unstained by evil and ignorant of it, such a person does not pursue
any ends, he knows nothing of a wondering and struggling consciousness
of the impure mind. He who is pure does not judge or condemn others, but
he also does not actualize any value, any goal. Innocence does not resist
evil, because it does not see it. Or, if seeing evil, it does not understand it
and believes in some hidden goodness behind it.
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Hartmann has high esteem for the value of the pure. Purity is extremely
rare; it is given, not acquired. This is why it virtually always appears as a
gift of grace. Perhaps more than any other moral value, purity should be
connected not with action but with disposition. The power of the pure
is not in his deeds but in his mere existence. This power should never be
underestimated:
[D]espite its originally negative character, [purity] shows itself to be
eminently positive and creative energy in life. Nothing perhaps works so
powerfully, so convincingly, for good, and so transforms others in their
innermost character, as the mere presence of a pure-minded person
who pursues the right undisturbed, just as he sees and understands it
in his simplicity. Precisely in his obliviousness to evil, in his failure to
understand it and to react to it, he becomes a symbol and attracts the
fallen and the morally prostrate.3
Evil shuns the light by its nature. The guilty ones are powerless against
purity. They never feel their weakness and sin more acutely then when
they encounter the pure: At the sight of Jesus, by his mere word, shrewd
calculation and subtlety are silenced.4
Purity is one of those moral values that cannot be striven for. It is either
fulfilled in a person, or it is forever unattainable. This may be why, by one
of those strange twists of the human psyche, we crave it so much. The
higher we estimate the value of purity, the stronger our metaphysical
need for the restoration of the lost innocence becomes. In ethics,
innocence lost cannot be restored. As Hartmann correctly points out,
this is not the last word. Religion attempts to do what is ethically
impossible:
The ancient concept of purification () [and the
Christian] wiping away of guilt is joined with the thought of
forgiveness and salvation through the suffering and sacrifice of the
divinity intervening for man. Purity returns as a gift of grace. The
condition which man must fulfill is simply belief. The mystery of the
new birth resolves the antinomy of the values.5
The mystery of the new birth, the ability to begin anew, as if the slate
is wiped clean, may temporarily resolve the antinomy of values. Not for
3
4
5
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long. For from the purity of life, from the complete innocence, we quickly
shift toward the richness of life and its complexity, which draws us back
into the conflicts of values. The irresolvable conflicts of values stain us
again.
If purity were the sole content of goodness, the outlook for our
humanity would be extremely pessimistic: such purity cannot be
humanly preserved. This is why its exemplars are a son of God and two
fictional characters. This is why Alyosha Karamazov is not the main hero
of Dostoevskys most powerful novel. If this novel has a hero, it is his
oldest brother, Dmitry. He exemplifies what Hartmann calls richness
of experience.
Richness of experience stands opposed to all three other fundamental
moral values. It is a pursuit of all values, of the fullness of life. The person
dominated by this value shines with optimism that the greatest unity of
the greatest diversity is attainable. This person finds enough room in his
soul for genuine and tragic conflicts, which dominate our lives. Richness
of experience is the value of many-sidedness, including much that is not
good, or noble, or pure. Hartmann holds richness of experience in
especially high esteem, for he finds it necessary for moral maturation:
There is certainly no other way to ethical maturity and expansion than
through the conflicts of life itself, through moral experienceeven
experience of wrong-doing, and this perhaps most of all.6
It is of indispensible value to struggle, and even to fail. There is no
other moral value that so adequately reflects the essential
incompleteness of man, his unquenchable thirst for the higher and the
highest, as well as the curiosity toward the most diverse, including that
which is of dubious moral value. One of the most important of
Hartmanns philosophical insights is that there may be no higher value
than the living of our life to the fullest, the spending of life.
Ethical actuality is richer than all human phantasy, than dream
and fiction. To live apathetically from moment to moment amid
the abundance, is nothing short of sin. The narrowness of a mans
participating sense of value makes him poor. It is because of his
prejudice, his blindness, that he does not see the abundance, in the
midst of which he stands. The ethos of openness to all values is the
tendency to do inward justice to life, to win from it its greatness. Its
passion springs from reverence for the unbounded abundance of the
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 41c [II, 209]. See Ethik, ch. 50b [II, 285].
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things that are of worth, it is knowledge filled with gratitude; and, where
knowledge fails, it is the presentiment that the values of existence are
inexhaustible. Whoever lives in this attitude, by him every restriction
of experience is recognized as superficiality, dullness, barrenness, a
waste of life . . . a moral ingratitude.7
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justice puts all human beings on the same level. Yet there is a significant
difference between them: justice may be unloving, brotherly love
quite unjust.1 While justice is directed outward, while it unites merely
the surface of one person with the surface of another, brotherly love is
directed inward. Brotherly love has its deep roots in the spirit and, like
the good, has a potential to become the unifying principle of all values.
Nevertheless, brotherly love does not involve a fusion of two persons, but
only a participation of one person in the life of another. Brotherly love is
solidarity with another person, a fundamentally positive devotion to the
general humanity of another.
In the case of brotherly love we overcome one form of egoism; when
dealing with love of the remote, the egoism is of a different kind. In one
case we are dealing with egoism in contrast to altruism, in another with
egoism of those who live here and now in contrast to the interest of those
who are remote, not only in space but also in time. While brotherly love
is an everyday virtue, love of the remote is an exceptional one. Following
Nietzsche, Hartmann treats love of the remote as higher than that of
brotherly love, insofar as it consists in striving toward the humanely ideal.
This is the foundation of progress, which must discriminate between good
and bad, mediocre and excellent, what is and what ought to be. Human
beings are ethically unequal, and they ought to be unequal. The more
unequal they are, the more movement there is in the process of
development and the higher are the ends at which they aim.
Hartmann regards love of the remotebetter yet: of the remotest
(Fernstenliebe)as love of the best, as love of the worthiest and the
noblest. It is the love of the creative spirit in humanity, the Platonic
striving toward Beauty in itself, as it is portrayed by Socrates in
Symposium. It is not accidental that this value is most of all promoted by
poets. Not just Homer and Plato, but everywhere, in every culture and
every epoch, poets are the greatest of the creative spirits, since they set in
front of humanity the ideals visualized in a palpable form. Regardless of
individual nuances in setting such ideals, striving is always directed in the
same way:
Greatness of moral spirit, intensity of spiritual energy, which is
required in the taking upon oneself of what is inherently uncertain.
The venture is great. Only a deep and mighty faith, permeating a
persons whole being, is equal to it . . . It is a faith on the grand
scale, faith in a higher order, which determines the cosmic meaning
of man.2
1
2
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Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 56c [II, 338]. For further discussion of radiant value
albeit without reference to Hartmann, Nietzsche, or Socratessee Lewis Hydes
extraordinary book, TheGift(New York: Random House, 2007).
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Just as radiant virtue can bestow the meaning upon life, so can personal
love. Hartmann seems to find personal love more elevating since he claims
that it gives ultimate meaning to life. While radiant virtue spreads its gifts
around indiscriminately, to all who are open-minded and open-hearted to
appreciate them, personal love directs itself to one unique individual. In
describing the virtue of personal love, Hartmann becomes poetic: And the
mystery of love is that it satisfies this deepest and least understood craving.
One who loves gives this unique gift to the person he loves. He gives a new
dimension to the being of the loved one, enabling him to be for himself
what otherwise he is only in himself .5
Brotherly love is related to the humanity in general of those who are
near us; we love them for who they are, not for what they can become.
4
5
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In love of the remote, our sight is raised toward the ideal of humanity in
general, toward the most noble and the best that humanity can become.
In radiant virtue, we return to the individual, to the person who
radiates goodness and spirituality around himself. In personal love,
affirmative devotion is directed from one individual toward another.
More precisely, it is directed toward the ideal of that unique individual.
In every existing, empirically given and limited person there is an
individual ideal of that person: the ideal of personality. Personal love
brings to light the otherwise hidden and neglected essence of ones
individuality.6
We habitually say that personal love is blind, but Hartmann corrects
this opinion. Personal love is blind to the surface of personality and its
general empirical and humanitarian aspects. Despite that, or just because
of it, personal love is capable of taking us much deeper toward the essence
of personality, toward its individual ideal, than any other form of cognition,
than any other form of love. When it comes to such depth, he who loves is
the only one who sees; while he who is without love is blind.7 We do not
see that this is the case because we have too narrow a conception of
knowledge. Just as the highest values are the individual values, so the
highest form of knowledge is the knowledge of the individual. It is
entirely wrong to limit knowledge to a thinking, reflective, or rational
consciousness of an object. Valuational knowledge, as Hartmann calls
it, is knowledge of the individual and unique, and it is based on feeling, on
sharpened and sensitive intuition for the richness of values.
Hartmann also wants to distinguish this conception of personal love
from the oft-repeated clichs regarding romantic love. He reminds us that
the bliss that a person experiences in love consists not in being in love, but
in loving. In loving, in striving toward uniting our own innermost depth
with the innermost depth of another person, personal love does not
simply aim at happiness. Speaking about happiness even obscures the
understanding of personal love more than it clarifies it. To shed more
light on the issue, he maintains that personal love is beyond happiness
and unhappiness. Happiness is secondary in love; love always involves
both suffering and joy. Ever a lover of aporias and paradoxes,
Hartmann even claims that,
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 58b [II, 371]. Similarly Scheler: love is that movement wherein
every concrete individual object that possesses value achieves the highest value
compatible with its nature and ideal vocation; or wherein it attains the ideal state of
value intrinsic to its nature; The Nature of Sympathy, trans. P. Heath (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 161.
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 58f [II, 379].
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The suffering of one who loves can even be happy, his happiness [can] be
painful.8
Hartmann is not playing with words. In fact, he emphasizes that the
experience of love is one of those that shows the limitations and
inflexibility of our ordinary language. Personal love overcomes such
limitation. The lovers develop their own language, their own signs and
signals, by which they can in one glance gain the knowledge they need of
the soul of their lovers. Here every gesture is important. Every
movement, every smile conveys a message: the two souls are united and
yet they remain two. Personal love makes possible the participation in
each others souls. It makes possible the intuitive vision of the best and
the highest. The penetrating knowledge of personal love may be one of the
greatest mysteries of the universe, perhaps the greatest mystery of all.
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 58d [II, 376]. For further discussion, see Eugene Kelly, Material
EthicsofValue, chs. 8.34, 10.5, and 10.8.5.
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I I. 5
The experience of beauty does not remove us from the field of mystery. If
anything, it takes us even deeper into the wonders of life, into the wonders
of values that serve no direct useful purpose in life. To account for the
mysterious relevance of the useless art, philosophers have repeatedly
brought art, and our experience of it, into a too close connection with either
cognition or morality. Hartmann rejects both ideas. The essence of art is
not cognitive, nor is it moral. Art has an irreducible degree of autonomy,
and more than once Hartmann indicates that aesthetic values may have the
most elevated position in the realm of values.
Yet values such as beauty and sublimity, tragic and comic, are not
detached from other values, spiritual or nonspiritual. Nor is art without
a significant relation to both cognition and morality. The nature of art is
complex and multilayered. We will never disentangle all of its knots, but
we can avoid some of the distorting views with regard to its nature.
Further, we can bring some light to our understanding of why the
experience of beauty is so fundamentally important for the human way of
life.
Hartmann insists that aesthetics deals with beauty in all its
manifestations, not just in art. He discusses beauty in nature and human
beauty as well. Hartmann goes so far as to wonder if there is anything
in this world, which does not have an aesthetic side and which cannot
be regarded as an aesthetic object. Not only the magnificent movements
of an antelope or the splendid colors of a butterfly, but the structure of a
crystal and even a starry sky above us can lead to an experience of beauty.
In fact, it is precisely something like the starry heavens, seen far away
from the bustle of a city and its blinding lights, which has been regarded
since ancient times as the most beautiful and perfect reality that can be
seen by man. Whether or not this is so, there is a reason why beauty, in
all of its forms, has always been considered the central aesthetic value.
Those who deny the role of natural and human beauty in aesthetics
rely too heavily either on the aesthetic idea (content) or the aesthetic form.
In either case, such an idea or form is something created by the artist.
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See Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 5, 8293, and ch. 41, 45767. See also Hartmann, Das
ProblemdesgeistigenSeins, ch. 46cd, 4246.
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Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 29c, 362. See also Nicolai Hartmann, Einfhrung in die
Philosophie(Osnabrck: L. Hanckel, 1949), 1757.
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I I. 6
Aesthetic Values
Hartmann thinks that there have been more misconceptions with regard
to aesthetics than with regard to axiology. The starry heavens of values are
always distant, and our ignorance and lack of sensitivity prevent us from
fully comprehending the values that seem so remote. Aesthetic values,
such as beautiful, comic, charming, and tragic, appear closer because
they are part and parcel of our everyday experiences. Even the tragic and
sublime lurk in the background of our lives and do not appear too
remote or unreachable.
In fact, a problem with aesthetic values is that they may be too close.
They are so close that it is hard to establish any distance to classify them
properly. They are also fluid and therefore difficult to capture in ordinary
language; a face that appears beautiful from one angle need not appear so
if we simply change our angle. Aesthetic values are so individual that our
linguistic capacity lags far behind our aesthetic feeling for values. Only
a few fairly general aesthetic values have names because our language is
incapable of reaching most of them.
One of the reasons we do not attempt to develop a more precise
language is that we think of aesthetic values as having secondary
importance. They are at best considered to be a spice of life, a
welcome but unnecessary addition to the food that sustains us. Although
the depth of our craving for aesthetic values may suggest something else,
we stick to our belief in the impractical and negligible role of aesthetic
values and show the tendency to subsume them under cognitive or, even
more frequently, under moral values.
Hartmann continually fights against the ingrained cognitivistic and
moralistic interpretations of aesthetic values. He also holds that aesthetic
values are higher, and weaker, than cognitive and moral values. In
accordance with his ontological view, cognitive and moral values have a
founding role for the realization of aesthetic values. The foundation always
comes from below. Meaning, by contrast, always descends from above. In
bestowing meaning, the sublime will become of utmost importance. As we
will later see, the experience of sublimity may bring us to heights that
would
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framework. Rather, a work of art creates its own framework, and the
relationship between background and foreground is made visible within the
realm of the work. While a concept has an essence outside itself, the
essence of an artistic work is always internally established. This is why,
unlike ever- changing philosophical and scientific concepts, works of art
have a different kind of stability and greater historical endurance. This is
also why they have the ability to detach their observers from the reality
that surrounds them and carry them into another world.
Although cognitive experience relies heavily on concepts, Hartmann
argues that concepts are not and do not lead to the highest degree of
cognition. Nor are principles the highest degree of knowledge. This may
sound shocking when coming from a philosopher, but Hartmann stands
firmly behind this conviction. Concepts and principles, including the
categorial concepts, are important and indispensible, but they capture only
the general features of various fragments of reality. They fail to capture
individual characteristics, and it is precisely what is individual and unique
that Hartmann considers real in the highest degree. (Recall that the
defining categories of any real being, regardless of the strata to which it
belongs, are the categories of individuality and temporality.) While our
cognition captures the general features of objects, in the case of aesthetic
experience perceived objects appear in their full individuality and
uniqueness. This is why aesthetic experience may lead to a higher form
of cognition. The highest and the most difficult kind of knowledge is that
of actual existing beings, of individuals. For that kind of knowledge, we
must rely on intuition rather than reason-based general concepts, on the
attentiveness to what is in front of us rather than on the power of
abstraction.
While our cognitive values provide stability in the experienced world
by boxing things into its categories, moral values generate
stabilitybyshowing us what ought to be. Both cognitive and moral values
are heavy; they tie us to the world as it is, or to the world as it ought to
be. By contrast, aesthetic values are light. They lift us up above the
given and the commanded; they show us what could be. Aesthetic values
do not depend on whether or not someone like Hamlet and King Lear,
Prince Myshkin or Dmitry Karamazov really exist in the world. Nor do
they depend on the victory of good over evil. All that is important is the
artistic formation of scenes and characters that enables an idea to shine
through the real foreground.
Aesthetic objects do not demand anything of us except the openness of
the mind and the perceptive appreciation of the world. When we are openminded and capable of perception of the higher order, aesthetic values
seem to come to us as gifts. They fly to us and create an impression that
everything is good, not in the moral sense of good, but in the sense of
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II.7
Truth in Art
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of one who admires and loves. Art directs our attention to that which we
customarily overlook in our normal lives. The poets gaze is in the
direction of lifes hidden treasures.
Here Hartmann touches on something of great significance. Our
knowledge of people in practical life is aimed at the general and the
typical. Poetry teaches us to observe and focus on the atypical, unique, and
seemingly accidental. In this context, we recall Hartmanns differentiation
between justice and various forms of love from his moral philosophy. A
practical man recognizes the people to avoid, distinguishing them from
those proper and just who may be useful as friends. This glimpse of reality,
through the eyes of a practical man, is detached, cold, and calculating.
A poet cannot see the world in this way. He shows us what is worth
paying attention to, regardless of any practical interest we may have. In
his compassion and caring attention, he penetrates into the depths of the
human soul. Compassion means suffering with; when we read of
Dmitrys recklessness and foolishness, of his naivet and essential
goodness, we suffer with him the injustices of the cruel world that will
not tolerate a wasteful person. Dostoevskys art leads us to observe and
follow Dmitry without judging him. Although we, the readers, cannot
understand all of his motives and actions (Dmitry does not understand
them himself), we take him as he is and follow him on the path of his life
with a loving gaze.
Art can instruct us, lead us to new discoveries, and make us wiser.
But these are not the only aims of art. Hartmann surprises us when he
says that one of the basic functions of art is to cheer us up. Life is often
harsh and unpleasant. Against this living truth stands a quest for beauty
that Hartmann connects with the idea that art enlivens us. The quest for
beauty must be synthesized in a work of art. Paradoxically, it is precisely
the harshness and unpleasantness of the living truth that allows beauty to
shine forth and fulfill yet a higher function of art. This occurs only in great
art, and only in its deepest and most hidden layers. In those layers we are
no longer dealing with that which belongs to existing humanity in general,
but with the ideal of humanity. Even more importantly, we are dealing
with the
most supreme of them all, theidealofanindividual.
Hartmann declares the ability to make what is great and ideal visible
through the insignificant and common as the chief function of art. The
presentation of the ugly and repulsive in the middle layers admits the
appearance of the great and ideal in the deepest layers. In these deep layers
we get a glimpse of what humanity could become, of what its true ideals
are. In rare works of art, we go even further and glimpse an individual
ideal. This is the same ideal that we sense in love, especially in radiant
virtue and personal love.
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1. An artist must make visible the essential connections of human life, the
real as well as only possible (or fictional) life.
This is what it takes to establish a truth in art, and it also explains why this
truth is rarely reached, only in the greatest art.
Now we are in a better position to understand why Hartmann finds it
denigrating for the truth in art to be subsumed either under cognitive or
ethical truth. The truth of art relies on cognitive and ethical truths and
builds upon them. Nevertheless, it penetrates beyond, toward the highest
degree of beauty: the sublime.
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Sublime
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This view stands in startling opposition to Kant, who has a low opinion
of music. For him, music is an artificial play of sensations, which speaks
to the senses only. Music lacks not only certain urbanity (it can become
obtrusive to others), but, more importantly, it is deprived of thought.
Kant wonders if music even belongs to fine arts, or whether it is merely
an agreeable art.2
For Hartmann, an avid cello player, music is the greatest of all arts. It
is the only art that enters the deepest layers of the sublime. He singles out
Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier as an example. Hartmann identifies the
advantage of music in exactly the points Kant cites as its disadvantage:
The most amazing thing about music is that, in its outermost external
layers, it is able to achieve an almost adequate expression for the
1
2
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Hartmann, sthetik, ch. 32a, 382. Notice how in Hartmanns view obscurity may
be something positive, in contrast to Descartess quest for clear and distinct ideas.
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2.
can indeed be quantitative, but the vast majority of cases deal with a
greatness of a different kind, a more qualitative kind. This qualitative
kind concerns what Kant treats as the dynamically sublime in nature.
The sublime should not be identified with the pressing, fearful,
catastrophic, or anything negative in general. The negative moment
does not make the core of our experience of the sublime. Quite the
contrary to such pessimistic interpretations, our primary experience of
the sublime is the positive experience of elevation and overcoming.
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4.
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6
7
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II.9
Critique of Moralism
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in
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,
Kant:Selections, ed. L. W. Beck (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1988), 419.
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CritiqueofMoralism
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Part III
Personality
The world is not ordered toward man, but he is ordered toward the
world.
Hartmann
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our orientation in reality. Let us briefly reconstruct how we came into this
impasse, and carefully consider what we can learn from Hartmann about
the nature and value of personality.
The modern turn toward the subject made things easier only on the
surface. It developed from Descartes and Lockes understanding of human
beings in terms of the split between mental and material substances.
The dubious ontology of substances was virtually rejected after Humes
skepticism and Kants transcendental turn. As often happens when a
well-entrenched view is repudiated, understanding the nature of human
personality in positive terms becomes increasingly problematic: Should we
understand it as Kants rational moral agent? Hegels spirit? Hussers
transcendental ego? Heideggers Dasein? Schelers person?
Scheler offers an appropriate diagnosis of both the spirit of the age and
the state of philosophy when he professes: Man is more of a problem to
himself at the present time than ever before in all recorded history.3
Hartmann is unimpressed by the profusion of various anthropological
and existentialist attempts to come to terms with this problem. Those
random and disconnected approaches treat man as if he were some kind
of uprooted and isolated being, with an unlimited capacity for shaping his
own destiny and recreating the creation in his own image. In Hartmanns
uncompromising judgment, these attempts are nothing but the expression
of an anthropocentric megalomania.4
Hartmanns view is based on the following crucial insight: the position
and role of man in the cosmos can only be securely delineated if
approached through careful analysis of the ontological and the
axiological realms. He is aware that the difficulties we encounter in
dealing with the mutual relationship of ontology and axiology are not
negligible. If ontology is superior to axiology, then we do violence to the
nature of values and virtually eliminate the possibility of freedom; in the
ontologically determined world, man becomes a speck of dust, an
ephemeral, negligible phenomenon. If, by contrast, axiology is dominant
over ontology, the whole natural basis of the world and of humanity is
ignored, and the problem of freedom seems equally unsolvable. In the
teleologically determined world, all reality from the beginning to the end
must conform to some predetermined valuational
Max Scheler, Mans Place in Nature, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (New York: Noonday
Press, 1979), 4. For the philosophical climate in the 1920s, see Peter E. Gordon,
Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2010).
4
See Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 17e [I, 243]. See also Ethik, ch. 21c [I, 2889], Hartmanns
review of the development of anthropology in German Philosophy in the Last Ten
Years, and Hartmann, TeleologischesDenken, ch. 13c, 1302.
3
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principles and mans action is thus superfluous. Indeed, the very existence
of man is superfluous, for the values prevail and determine reality with or
without mans consciousness of it.
Ontology and axiology cover two aspects of being that have different
yet complementary roles. Real being grounds everything there is, and
therefore plays an important role in understanding the nature and
position of man in the universe. Ideal being enables the possibility of
meaning through the actualization of values in real being. Man stands
at the crossroads of real and ideal being; he mediates between the two
realms. His role and his destiny are framed in this mediating role,
balancing the firm ground below and the starry heavens above. This
mediating position gives neither ontological priority to axiology nor
primacy to practical reason. All that it really justifies is an axiological
primacy of the ideal sphere, in contrast to the ontological primacy of
the real sphere.5
As a natural being, man is subject to ontological determinations. These
determinations, thorough as they are, nevertheless allow novelty at every
higher stratum. The categorial dependency of the higher on the lower
strata does not preclude the possibility of new elements on a higher level.
Thus, a conscious subject can become a spiritual being (or a person). This
ontological insight is critical to Hartmann; although a person can never be
reduced to a conscious subject, there can be no personality that is also not
a conscious subject.
Surprisingly, this fundamental realization was forgotten or overlooked
by Scheler, who otherwise praises the results of Hartmans ontology.
Carried on the wings of his extraordinary mind, Scheler violates it not
only when he argues that persons cannot be conceived as objects, but even
more so when he speaks of God as a person.
Hartman vehemently opposes any attempt to personify God. Making
a definitive statement about God is claiming to know what can never be
an object of definitive thought; speaking of God in this way is assuming
familiarity with that what is most unknown and most impenetrable.
It is no less problematic to speak of God as a person. Like Kant (in the
Transcendental Dialectic of his Critique of Pure Reason), Hartmann
maintains that we have no cognitive grounds either to affirm or to deny the
possibility of God as a person. What we can know is that the postulation
of God as a person (who at the same time is not a subject) violates the
ontological laws: Personality exists only on a basis of subjectivity, just as
5
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 17e [I, 243]. See Hartmann, NeueWegederOntologie, chs. 4,
11; and DasProblemdesgeistigenSeins, ch. 14f, 15961.
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subjectivity exists only on a basis of organic life, and life only on a basis
of the whole subordinate uniformity of nature.6
Let us assume that such an ontological determination holds and look at
the nature of personality from the opposite direction. What kind of novelty
does personality represent in comparison to a subject? Hartmann relates
personality to the highest strata of spiritual being. Recall that according to
his ontology not every spiritual beingisaperson: theso-called objective
spirit and the objectified spirit are not persons. Only individual, living
beings can be persons. Speaking in the context of moral values,
Hartmann maintains that, of all real entities, only a moral subject can
stand enraptured with the ideal world of values. He is also the only real
entity that has the capacity to communicate these values to a reality that
does not incorporate them. A person is only the subject who can, in this
way, bring the ontological and the axiological realms together.
Thus, there is a double determination that alone allows a subject
to become a person, an ontological determination from below and an
axiological determination from above:
A personal being is metaphysically possible only at a boundary line
between ideal and real determinationthat is, at the point of their
reciprocal impact, their opposition and their union, only at the
connecting point of two worlds, the ontological and the axiological.
The intermediate position between the two, the non-merging of either
into the other, as well as participation in both, is the condition of
personality.7
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prior commitment and inner attitude that lead to selections and actions.
Freedom of the will scratches the surface of the moral life. It plays
a constitutive role only in the ethics narrowly focused on the ought to
do and the relationship of means and ends. Hartmanns distinction
between ought to be and ought to do points toward more fundamental
dispositions and capacities needed before we reach the level of choosing
and acting.
There are two related but different elements that constitute the
personality: freedom in the more fundamental sense and the carrying of
moral values. Instead of freedom of the will, Hartmann prefers to talk
about moral freedom: a personal entity is a free entity. Values do not coerce
the person. Even when they are comprehended, they impose a claim on a
person that leaves him free to address the values in accordance with his
inner constitution, attitudes, intentions, and the context in which he finds
himself. Of decisive significance is that the value of intention (or moral
freedom) is distinguished from the intended value (which he associates
with the freedom of the will). Only the former makes the person a carrier
of moral values.
Like Kant, Hartmann considers a person to be a citizen of two worlds.
For him, they are not the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds. They are
the realms of real and ideal being, which intertwine and influence each
other through him: The life of a person is a single unbroken chain of
situations in which he must find his way.8 This single unbroken chain is
the inner pole of personality, the unity of a persons manifold and
changeable commitments. These commitments are tested and the persons
character is revealed through his activity, suffering, moral strength,
freedom of the will, foresight, and purposive efficiency. Behind all these
various manifestations we find the inner core, the self-synthesis that is,
at the same time, continuously self-transcending as well. How this is all
done, we can neither fully comprehend nor rationally explain. We only
know that, as a unity of commitments, personality gives expression to the
virtually inexhaustible complexity of mans being.
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Personality as a Value
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capacities. Kant answers the second of these concerns in his late work,
ReligionwithintheLimitsofReasonAlone. Here he discusses the concept
of personality in the context of his consideration of several predispositions.
(The term predisposition [Anlage] is Kants way of talking about basic
human nature as it is prior to any actual exercise of freedom and
autonomy.) The three original predispositions are those of animality,
humanity, and personality. For Kant these predispositions correspond to:
(i) physical love that provides for the preservation of the species; (ii)
self-love that is both physical and rational, producing the inclination to
acquire worth in the opinion of others; and (iii) the capacity for
respect for the moral law, as sufficient incentive for the will.1
Kant does not have much admiration for animality: Life as such . . .
has no intrinsic value at all . . . it has value only as regards the use to
which we put it, the ends to which we direct it.2 Is it, then, humanity that
deserves our respect? Or should we reserve this respect for personality
only? This issue is not clearly resolved in Kants philosophy. It is only
clear that humanity is a precondition for personality, or the state of
morality, for Kant. Humanity in itself is not necessarily an actual moral
state, but is at least required for its possibility. This possibility seems
sufficient to assign to human beings what Kant considers as an
absolute value: the value of dignity and autonomy.
If we choose to believe Kant, then our lives are transformed from no
value at all (in the case of sheer animality) into something of absolute
values (insofar as we are moral beings). In what exactly does this magical
transformative value consist? Kant formulates his ideas regarding the value
of human beings (as moral beings) in different ways. Most of them seem to
converge to one critical point: respect for the moral law. In Lewis White
Becks formulation:
Personality . . . is an Idea of reason, and personality is not given. We
are persons, but no finite sensuous being is fully adequate to the Idea
of personality. In human nature, considered empirically, we find at
most only a predisposition for personality, which is the capacity for
respecting the moral law and making it sufficient incentive for the
will.3
2
3
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Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57h [II, 357]. Scheler raises a similar criticism: There can be
no respect for a norm or a moral law which is not based on respect for a person who
posits itand ultimately is founded on love for the person as a model; Formalismin
Ethics, 560.
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57h [II, 357]. For further discussion, see a very important
ch. 80 [III, 180201] of Ethik.
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excludes the moral justification of a will exactly the same in others, but
it positively demands also the unique factor in my own will, without
prejudice to the classification which brings my will and that of others
under a rude uniformity of the ought. The ought allows unlimited
scope for an individually articulated will.8
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universal: it is valid for every subject that grasps values, although not
every subject does. On the other hand, the value of personality is
objectively individual: like aesthetic values, it is always a value of one
single individual. Again, like aesthetic values, the value of personality is
nevertheless a value that is objectively valid for anyone who grasps its
unique meaning.
Hartmann has two more insights in connection with the nature of
the value of personality. The more obvious of them is that the value of
personality is independent of its actualization (or realization); like all
other values, the value of personality has its ideal existence. The second
and more important insight is that the value of personality is not attainable
in the pursuit of itself, but only in the pursuit of other values. Next we will
consider why this is so, and how exactly the value of personality can be
realized.
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III. 3
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Pseudo,Spurious,andGenuinePersonality
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Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 57i [II, 362]. This attitude is similar to Hartmanns distinction
between intentiorectaand intentioobliqua.
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In this sense (and in this sense alone), the Socratic connection between
virtue and knowledge can be justified. It should not, however, lead toward
an exaggerated identification of virtue with knowledge. No insight into the
nature of the good is sufficient to make a person good, for in a genuine
personality any such insight must be reinforced by volition, determination,
active energy, and self-mastery.
Wisdom lies in the same direction as goodness, but they do not
coincide. Plato understands the Socratic wisdom in the right way when he
points out the domination of values in their ideality (as Ideas). Wisdom
and virtue are inseparably connected to the beholding of Ideas in such a
way that a person beholding them sees in their light everything that he
encounters and all his endeavors in life.
The wise man carries into all the relations of life the standards of
value which he possesses in his spiritual taste, he saturates his
outlook upon life with them. This domination of values does not
come to him by way of reflection, or through knowledge of
commandments, but is an immediate, intuitive, emotionally toned
domination, which from the centre of moral perception penetrates
all unobserved and impulsive excitations, and is there already alive
in them.8
How different is this from any typology of persons and our usual ideas
of heroes and great men! How different is this from all intellectualistic
and moralistic attempts to force upon us their conceptual schemes and
moral precepts! Everything in Hartmanns description sounds simple and
natural, just as it seems when we imagine the historical Socrates in his
usual dialogical encounters. Wisdom is that core of personality, its
unifying and valuational principle that colors everything a person
observes and does. To become a genuine personality is to become wise in
this original, Socratic sense. As Hartmann articulates it,
For the wise man the intuitive grasping of the situation is in part
determined by this wider perspective, by that of the Idea. The
7
8
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III. 4
Fulfillment of Personality
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life.
What Hartmann means when he talks about radiant
virtue and wisdom is love of the world. Likely he
avoids this phrase because it plays a prominent role in
Schelers philosophy, although Scheler interprets it in
4
5
6
7
Hartmann,
Hartmann,
Hartmann,
Hartmann,
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Quoted from Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 52b [II, 293] and ch. 52a [II, 292].
Hartmann, Ethik, ch. 53a [II, 299].
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Conclusion: Hartmanns
New Ways of
Philosophy
One clear evening, when Hartmann was a boy, his father
took him outside. They must have stayed outdoors for a
quite a while, looking at the starry sky. His father
wanted to show the boy how, when observed in contrast
to the local church tower, the position of the stars in the
sky would change with the passing of time.1 This may
well have been Hartmanns introduction into philosophy,
and he never forgot the lesson. Whether he was later
thinking about the starry heavens of values, or the
oceanic depths of being, Hartmann never failed to relate
it to something right here and right now, tangible and
measurable by the standards of our ordinary life. He did
not allow himself to be carried away on the wings of
speculations; he never overlooked what is right in front of
him. Both the far away and the nearest must always be
kept in sight, and the resistance of what is given and near
must be taken as the ultimate check on our thoughts
and theories. If something (like our ideas of the divine
being, or of what happens after we die) could not be
brought up in an interactive connection with the aspects
of the phenomenally given world, Hartmann bracketed
it out of his philosophical analysis. Philosophy for him
was not primarily a method of thinking but a way of
relating to the world.
Hartmanns most visible philosophical strength is his
sharp eye for details. These details, however, are
hardly ever the ultimate points that cannot be further
resolved. Nor are they isolated from the network of
related elements, within which they are structured.
Whatever event or problem Hartmann happened to be
exploring, he would carry out his exploration in
connection with other related phenomena. There is no
atomism of any kind in his philosophy, nor is there any
form of reductivism that would be philosophically
acceptable for him.
This way of philosophical analysis difers significantly
from how analysis is usually understood in Western
philosophy. The appeal of the analytical method has
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is in our world.
Hartmanns entire philosophy is an attempt to
rediscover the real and develop an appreciation for it.
The real has to be rediscovered and rescued from
political and economic schemes of practical men that
6
Arendt, TheHumanCondition, 1.
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